PRETTY WOMAN--JULIA ROBERTS' FIRM NO TO ITS SEQUEL

No Pretty Woman sequel for me: Julia Roberts

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Press Trust Of India

London, February 02, 2010

First Published: 18:00 IST(2/2/2010)

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Hollywood star Julia Roberts is against making sequel of Pretty Woman because she considers herself too "old" to star in it. The 42-year-old actress, who is best known for her role as prostitute Vivian Ward opposite Richard Gere in the popular 1990 movie, is adamant that she does not want a follow-up, reported Contactmusic.
"Nobody wants to see an old hooker. It's not that I'm anti-romantic comedy, which, for some reason, is always the favoured interpretation," said Roberts.
Besides Pretty Woman, the Oscar-winning actress has also starred in rom-coms like My Best Friends Wedding and Runaway Bride.
"I like being funny, I like being romantic... but it's challenging trying to find a script which is original or interesting," said Roberts.

Baz Luhrmann excited to work with Indian stars

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Indo-Asian News Service

New Delhi, February 04, 2010

First Published: 23:00 IST(4/2/2010)

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Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann finds a reflection of Shakespeare's plays in Bollywood films and was so impressed with Indian stars and Hindi movies that he used the song Chamma, Chamma in his musical Moulin Rouge. Now the Oscar-nominated director is keen to work on a film in India and collaborate with music maestro A.R. Rahman.
"There are a number of classic stars here and there are a few new Indian actors as well who are doing things differently. The idea of working with Indian actors has always excited me and if it works out I definitely will. I am keeping my fingers crossed," Luhrmann told IANS in an interview.
This is Luhrmann's fourth trip to India. So did he gather from the trip any fodder for his next project? "I wouldn't say fodder, but every time I come here it has had a direct effect on my life and my work. There are many things I am working on. I have many pieces that could be played in India," he said.
Luhrmann's films Strictly Ballroom, Romeo Juliet, Moulin Rouge and Australia had a profound presence of "love and spirit". Not many know that the influence has an Indian connect.
"I can't escape my spirit and love - the truth of relationships and the depth, meaning and power of them. Without that I can't be creative. When I don't have one of that, I am nothing.
"When I came here 15 years ago that changed me and every single time I come here, I've had the same experience. It's always the same and very spiritual. At the same time all the other experience I have gathered here whether it is Satyajit Ray or anything, at the heart of it is love. The (Indian) connection is always with me. My relationship with India is continuing," he added.
Luhrmann has been hugely influenced by Bollywood and picked up many things while researching for his opera production A Midsummer Night's Dream here in 1993. Eventually he also set the opera in India.
His 2001 musical Moulin Rouge saw actress Nicole Kidman grooving to popular Bollywood number Chamma chamma from China Gate. "Indian musicals have inspired me since the first time I've been here. I had that cathartic experience 15 years ago when I was here working on Shakespeare and watching a Bollywood movie and it felt the same (like Shakespeare's plays).
"(In Bollywood films) There's tragedy, then comedy and next is music which is just like Shakespeare's works. It reached me as an idea of the old form that was alive in Bollywood and that we brought to ground in Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge."
The 47-year-old was here with Australian portrait painter Vincent Fantauzzo, as part of a Le Sutra and Royal Enfield initiative.
Asked how his overall trip to the country was, he said: "You cannot put it in a nutshell. If you could, it wouldn't be India. And the best thing about being in India is not having plans. But I'll be honest, in the first couple of days it is a bit hot, but then I always find myself secured a lot."
Luhrmann is now working on F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece "The Great Gatsby", which he hasn't confirmed yet.
"Great Gatsby is one project I am working on but I haven't confirmed it yet. I do have the rights to that book but I don't know if I'm doing it (in terms of a film)," he said.

HOLLYWOOD STORIES--HOT AND NEW

1//Bollywood actress Mallika Sherawat has been cast opposite Avatar star Laz Alonso in Love, Barack, her upcoming Hollywood flick, a political comedy.
Sherawat, who plays the the character of Aretha Gupta, a devoted local Obama volunteer coordinator, said in a statement, “Laz Alonso is a talented and exciting actor. I’m very lucky to be working with him.”
American filmmaker Doug McHenry is directing the film, which will show Democrat Aretha unexpectedly falling for her Republican counterpart (Alonso), working for the local McCain office a month before election day.
The film also stars veteran actress Ruby Dee, comic actor Gerry Bednob and film and television actress Loretta Devine.

James Cameron hints at Avatar sequel

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Agence France-Presse

Los Angeles, February 04, 2010

First Published: 15:40 IST(4/2/2010)

Last Updated: 16:39 IST(4/2/2010)

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Canadian director James Cameron said on Wednesday he could be "persuaded" to film a sequel to his record-breaking science-fiction epic Avatar. The futuristic 3-D blockbuster reached yet another milestone on Tuesday, when it smashed the North American box office record previously held by Cameron's Titanic (1997).

"We might be persuaded. We'll have to see how much money the movie makes first," Cameron told CNN when asked about a possible sequel. Money should be of no concern, with Avatar having already racked up over 2.05 billion dollars worldwide, including over 601.1 million in the United States and Canada, overtaking the 600.8 million Titanic earned.

It has also secured nine Oscar nominations, including in the leading categories of best film and best director, as well as several technical achievement categories. In his first interview since his film earned its massive success, Cameron said he was "absolutely" surprised by the records it has broken.

"And that's not some sort of false humility. We thought it was gonna be a commercial movie, but we didn't think it was gonna do half of what it's done financially," he said.

"I see a very similar pattern, in a sense, between Titanic and Avatar. Not that they are similar films because they are not - totally different subjects - but in both cases, you have people coming back over and over to see the film."

Cameron pointed to an "emotional connection" of the public across cultural boundaries with these films. Despite not saying a word about the Oscar nominations, he acknowledged that making Avatar - believed to be the most expensive motion picture ever - was no easy undertaking.

"I had to keep from putting a pistol in my mouth about 20 times during the making of this film," he said ironically.  "That's the nature of an experimental project. It is like the Lewis and Clark expedition (to the US Pacific coast). They can have a general idea where they are going but there is no way you could predict all twists and turns along the way."

STRIKER--REVIEW BY MAYANK SHEKHAR

Mayank Shekhar, Hindustan Times

New Delhi, February 05, 2010

First Published: 18:37 IST(5/2/2010)

Last Updated: 18:47 IST(5/2/2010)

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Director: Chandan Arora
Actors: Siddharth, Ankur Vikal
Rating: ***
Abhay Deol, an actor rightly credited with pioneering what’s now termed ‘new Bollywood’ says it’s not that hard to be different in Hindi cinema after all. You put together a film where the hero doesn’t lip-sync a song, and there are no dances, the film becomes different on its own. Deol is right.
I’d add the presence of a believable setting, something that’s conventional for most films, that can immediately mark itself as different for a Hindi movie as well.
This is, by that logic, a different film, as it were. Though a mellifluous Sufi song (Amit Trivedi) does conveniently express the bond between the hero, and his lovely next-door neighbour. The girl’s Muslim; the boy, Hindu. Soon as the father finds his daughter with the boy, the family quietly moves out of the neighbourhood. You can’t quite tell the purpose of this brief romance. Maybe it is to suggest times when segregation between Hindus and Muslims wasn’t complete. Such young love in the ghetto was still possible, or at any rate, imaginable. It isn’t anymore.
The film is set across the late ‘70s, through the ‘80s, until December, ’92 BC (Before Cellphone). The latter being that moment in Mumbai’s history, when the city truly lost its famed innocence. It revealed a communal underbelly unknown to even its residents, and exposed suddenly its sword-wielding rioting mobs that began to distinguish between its own, over a God you privately prayed to. The state was complicit to the crime. The culture and politics of Mumbai (or for that matter, Maharashtra) hasn’t remained the same since. The film latently expresses a similar sentiment.
As a young Hindu boy, Surya (Siddharth) moved from Nagpada into a “10 by 10” (hutment) in Malvani, a large claustrophobic Muslim neighbourhood in the far, northwestern suburb of Mumbai. Such rounding alleys bear few exit routes for the restless and ambitious. I suppose even Dubai isn’t a practical dream anymore.
Surya realises, “Mangne se milta nahin (You don’t get anything when you ask). Chheenna galat hai (Snatching is wrong). Jeetna hi padega -- you have to win, to survive, or hope for a better life. The kid’s a bit of a pro in Carrom, a parlour game that we don’t credit enough for being a sport only as indigenously Indian as kabaddi. Surya’s friend (Ankur Vikal, astoundingly real) becomes a sort of a manager. Aditya Panscholi plays the don. Carrom boards double up for gambling tables. Bets are placed on the star striker, the major “kheli” (player). He rarely disappoints. Such dens hide within several booby traps. Surya is bound to fall. He does.
Yet, this is neither a rags-to-success story of a national carrom champion (which it could’ve been). Nor is it a simplistic prequel to Satya’s Bhikhu Mhatre (that it seemed to be). The hero’s complex journey develops over such strong shades of black-gray that you could even shift uncomfortably on your seat as you watch the protagonist rape a girl he could’ve loved. The story is in the grittiness of experience. Judgment isn’t fed; purpose, not expressly defined. This can be a problem for certain audiences who like to be told everything: who’s the loved hero or feared villain, why to empathise, when to emote…
Sure this film is different then. Shouldn’t each be anyway? Worth it, all the way.